Why Yes, This Is an 80,000-Brick Lego Dwarven Village

Was your answer "Build an 80,000-brick Lego version of Erebor, the Dwarven village from The Hobbit"? No? That's a shame.

Because that's exactly what 17-year-old Blake Baer and 18-year-old Jack Bittner did, and it was incredibly worth it. At 200 pounds and nearly 5 feet tall, their kingdom is roughly the size of one of the dwarves from the film, as Gizmodo helpfully notes.

Blake Baer and Jack Bittner's Lego Erebor

Courtesy Blake Baer

We were planning on summarizing the Wikipedia entry for Erebor, but it's hopelessly complex. (Though if you want the entire history of the village, here it is.)

Blake Baer and Jack Bittner's Lego Erebor

Courtesy Blake Baer

Gizmodo's summary is much more succinct: "Erebor was home of the Longbeards, a clan of Dwarves, and was known as the Kingdom Under the Mountain."

Blake Baer and Jack Bittner's Lego Erebor

Courtesy Blake Baer

"It's where the Arkenstone was discovered and subsequently lost when the dragon Smaug seized the mountain."

Blake Baer and Jack Bittner's Lego Erebor

Courtesy Blake Baer

The Arkenstone figures highly into The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, the forthcoming installment in Peter Jackson's "I Made One Book Into Three Movies" Hobbitsaga.

Blake Baer and Jack Bittner's Lego Erebor

Courtesy Blake Baer

It took Baer and Bittner 400 hours to construct their Erebor.

Blake Baer, 17, and Jack Bittner, 18, pose with their Lego Hobbit village

Courtesy Blake Baer

Here they are posing with their creation to give you some sense of its epic scale. Now they just need to build a life-size Lego Martin Freeman.